Bacon's DictionaryAppendices

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The exhibits and miniatures of which are found in this section, are designed to assist the serious student and reader in following the path of the Authorship Controvesy that has been so laboriously persued by many authors and researchers during its commence.

These exhibits have been placed here as not to interrupt the flow of reading in the Baconian Dictionary sections, being a finding list of Bacon’s works, his history, his thoughts and his aims, which are a subject of study and discussion.

Bacon’s Enemies

The opinion of Dr. Harvery on Bacon’s character was neither an unnatural nor altogether an unfair one, as expressed by a man of great eminence, in a particular branch of science, concerning one who attempted to make all science his province. Then, the philosopher and the specialist were apt to misunderstand and undervalue each other for Napier refers to a work of Alexander Koss, a voluminous author, well known to the readers of Hudibras, entitled Arcana Microcosmi, or the Hid Secrets of Man’s Body discovered; with a Refutation, amongst other books, of Bacon’s Natural History (1652). The copy in the Bodleian is the 1651 edition, containing only the refutation of Dr. Browne’s Vulgar Errors, and not that of Bacon’s Sylva Sylvarum. The author says: “I have cursorily run over my Lord’s New Philosophy, and find that philosophy is like wine, the older the better to the taste. He is especially angry with these new Philosophers for having jumbled the predicaments so together, that their scholars can never find out the true genus of things.” Alexander Ross is a very zealous Aristotelian, and, at the end of his attack on Sir Thomas Browne, “pities to see so many young heads, still gaping like chameleons for knowledge, and are never filled, because they feed upon airy and empty fancies; loathing the sound, solid and wholesome viands of Peripatetic wisdom, they reject Aristotle’s pure Fountains, and dig to themselves cisterns that will hold no water. Let us not wander then any longer with Hagar in the wild dessert. Let Prodigals forsake their husks, and leave them to swine.” Mosheim, who points out that Ross’s allusion is to Bacon, attempts, in his note, to explain Cudworth, but there can be little doubt that, in his frequent attacks on the philosophy of Democritus, Cudworth also glances at Bacon; and De Rémusat draws attention to the circumstance that Cudworth did not combat Bacon by name. 1

One of the most violent antagonists of Bacon and of the Royal Society (names which, in his mind, were evidently very closely connected) was Dr. Henry Stubbe; “the most noted person of his age that these late times have produced,” says Antony Wood, who has devoted to him one of the quaintest and most amusing of his Lives. 2 Stubbe was a turn-coat alike in philosophy, religion, and politics, and was animated by more even than the usual bitterness of his class. His diatribes against Sprat, Glanvill, the Royal Society in general, and Bacon as their philosophical father, are, however virulent, too dull and rambling to be worth transcription, but specimens of them may be found in the Legends no Histories (1670), in the Plus Ultra reduced to a Non Plus (1670), The Lord Bacon’s Relation of the Sweating-Sickness (1671), and An Epistolary Discourse concerning Phlebotomy (1671). He speaks repeatedly of “these Baconical Philosophers,” “this Bacon-faced generation,” &c., (showing, by the way, pretty conclusively, the influence which was already supposed to be exercised by Bacon’s philosophy), and, as a professed admirer of the old learning, somewhat inconsistently “declares that the Lord Bacon did steal the principal parts of his Novum Organum out of Aristotle, and only disguised his Suggestions in a new Mode and Dress.” Thus, “We acknowledge no Chancellors of Philosophy, Philology, Medicine, &c.” “No Law ever made him our Dictator, nor is there any Reason that concludes him infallible.” “Let these insulse Adherents of his, buy some salt, and make use of more than one grain, when they read him.” Elsewhere, Stubbe informs his readers that it is only out of his regard to Physic, Religion, and Education, that he is led to intermeddle in “Natural Philosophy,” or the disputes of these “Experimental Philosophers.”

Similarly, the Advancement of Learning was “stolen from Ludovicus Vivès’ De causis corruptarum Artium.” Having occasion to compare a remedy against the Sweating-sickness given by Holinshed the chronicler with one given by Bacon, he says: “The works of the former will be much more valued than the latter by our nation, as long as they have any judgment. The truth is the Lord Bacon is like great piles; when the Sun is not high, they cast an extraordinary shadow over the earth, which lesseneth as the Sun grows vertical.” 3 He continues: “The only judgment I can make of my Lord Bacon’s Actings is that being so Flagitious, and so ignominiously degraded: He determined to redeem the Infamy of his past life by amusing the world with New Projects; and to gain a Chancellorship in Literature, when he was excluded from that on the Bench: And to revenge himself of the Nation whom he had exasperated, by diffusing Heresies in Philosophy, and creating in the Breasts of the English such a desire of Novelty as rose up to a contempt of the Ancient Ecclesiastical and Civil Jurisdiction, and the Old Government as well as Governors of the Realm: And the Root of all our present Distractions was planted by his hand.” 4

In Francis Osborn’s Miscellany (1659), The Author to the Reader, there is a curious sentence, showing how early the charge of Atheism was directed against Bacon. After speaking of Raleigh having been branded with the title of an Atheist, “though a known asserter of God and providence,” the writer goes on to say: “A like censure fell to the share of venerable Bacon, till over-balanced by a greater weight of glory from Strangers.” Cudworth, in his Intellectual System (published in 1678), attacks Bacon for having called in question the received doctrine of Final Causes. He seems doubtful, however, what interpretation to put on his words. Thus, having spoken of “some who have unskilfully attributed their own Properties to Inanimate Bodies,” he proceeds to say: “Of which Fanciful Extravagances if the Advancer of Learning be understood, there is nothing to be reprehended in this following passage of his, Incredibile est quantum agmen Idolorum Philosophiae immiserit, Naturalium Operationum ad Similitudinem Actionum Humanarum Reductio. But if that of his be extended further, to take away all Final Causes from the things of Nature, as if nothing were done therein for Ends Intended by a Higher Mind, then it is the very Spirit of Atheism and Infidelity.” 5

Passing to the middle of the eighteenth century, when Bacon was at the zenith of his glory, we find the chorus of approbation broken by the modified praise rather than the disparagement of Hume. The weapon, which Hume wielded, comparison with philosophers who have made positive contributions to science, is one which has since been frequently used with effect. 6 From Hume’s History of England, Appendix to the Reign of James I: “The great glory of literature in this island, during the reign of James, was Lord Bacon. Most of his performances were composed in Latin; though he possessed neither the elegance of that, nor of his native tongue. If we consider the variety of talents displayed by this man, as a public speaker, a man of business, a wit, a courtier, a companion, an author, a philosopher, he is justly the object of great admiration. If we consider him merely as an author and philosopher, the light in which we view him at present, though very estimable, he was yet inferior to his cotemporary Galileo, perhaps even to Kepler. Bacon pointed out at a distance the road to true philosophy: Galileo both pointed it out to others, and made himself considerable advances in it. The Englishman was ignorant of geometry: the Florentine revived that science, excelled in it, and was the first that applied it, together with experiment, to natural philosophy. The former rejected, with the most positive disdain, the system of Copernicus: the latter fortified it with new proofs, derived both from reason and the senses. Bacon’s style is stiff and rigid: his wit, though often brilliant, is also often unnatural and far-fetched; and he seems to be the original of those pointed similes and long-spun allegories, which so much distinguish the English authors: Galileo is a lively and agreeable, though somewhat a prolix, writer. But Italy, not united in any single government, and perhaps satiated with that literary glory which it has possessed both in ancient and modern times, has too much neglected the renowned which it has acquired by giving birth to so great a man. That national spirit which prevails among the English, and which forms their great happiness, is the cause why they bestow on all their eminent writers, and on Bacon among the rest, such praises and acclamations, as may often appear partial and excessive.”

The excessive praise bestowed on Bacon by Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, though met at first by the argument that they did not truly represent the views of Bacon, at last provoked a violent reaction, to which the well-known work of Count Joseph de Maistre gave expression. This work entitled Examen de la Philosophie de Bacon was published posthumously at Paris and Lyons in 1836. To de Maistre, Bacon is, above all things, an atheist, who aggravated his atheism by hypocrisy. But he is also a mere pretender to philosophy and science, a charlatan, an impostor. He contributed nothing to science himself, and it is a mere delusion to suppose that his philosophy has in any way helped to form those who have done so. It is true that he preaches science, but, like his Church, when it preaches Christianity, he preaches without a mission; and de Maistre concludes his thoughts that to Bacon, as its ultimate source, was due all the atheism, the materialism, the sensualism, the libertinism of the untoward generation which had just passed away in France. De Maistre was a furious, though an ingenious, fanatic.

On the attacks of Brewster, Lasson, and Liebig, which, either from their intrinsic merit or from the position of their authors, require serious attention. In his Life of Newton (1855) Sir D. Brewster, irritated apparently by the injudicious statement of “some modern writers of celebrity,” that Newton “owed all his discoveries to the application of the principles of Bacon,” maintains a proposition equally extreme, and, as it seems, equally untrue, that he did not “derive the slightest advantage from Bacon’s precepts.” Brewster goes on to combat his claims generally as a reformer of science. He argues or rather asserts (for, except of the first proposition, he adduces hardly any proof) that “the necessity of experimental research, and of advancing gradually from the study of facts to the determination of their cause, is a doctrine which was not only inculcated, but successfully followed by preceding philosophers;” that no testimonies to the value of Bacon’s method have been offered by those who have actually cultivated science; that, as regards his own investigation into the nature of heat, “the oracle which he had himself established refused to give its responses, and the ministering priest was driven with discomfiture from his shrine;” that “a collection of scientific facts are of themselves incapable of leading to discovery, unless they contain the predominating fact or relation in which the discovery mainly resides.” Briefly to reply to these assertions, the first is, within certain limits and with certain explanations, which, however, require to be given, undoubtedly true; the second has abundantly been disproved; as to the third, the “ministering priest” obtained a far more luminous answer than oracles are usually in the habit of giving; with regard to the last, if Brewster means that a mere collection of facts, without any play of the mind upon them (permissio intellectus, as Bacon phrased it, or, as we should say in technical language, formation of hypotheses), is seldom or never likely to lead to discovery, may be agreed upon, but then Bacon himself, we must recollect, was happily inconsistent on this point. Brief as is Brewster’s notice of Bacon, it deserves considerable attention, because his objections anticipated, if indeed they did not suggest, some of the leading criticisms in the two works which follow.

Lasson’s monograph on Bacon 7 appeared in the Jahresbericht über die Louisenstädtische Realschule. Though it only extends over thirty-two pages, it is the weightiest of the attacks upon Bacon which may be found. It is written not only with more moderation, but with more knowledge of Bacon’s writings, and with more sympathy with the philosophical spirit in its relation to science, than is the violent diatribe of Liebig, to be next noticed. The writer dwells with much emphasis on the scientific progress, which had been already made in Bacon’s time, and maintains that the reformation of science was not the work of a single man, but the gradual product of the age. Moreover, the necessity of Induction, the appeal to Observation and Experiment, and the practical aims, which should be kept in view in scientific enquiry, had been insisted on by a host of writers before Bacon gave utterance to them. Having thus combated Bacon’s claim to originality, he next proceeds to an examination of his system. Here, he finds special fault with his mechanical theory of Induction, the manner in which he ignores the activity of the Understanding, his criticism of Final Causes, his conception of Forms, his neglect of quantitative relations. Lasson, like Liebig, is especially severe on the Sylva Sylvarum, which he says might have been more appropriately written in the eleventh than in the seventeenth century. Finally, he puts the question, “Was Bacon really a Philosopher?” and he answers that, in the proper sense of the word, he was not; he was a genius, but, at the same time, a Dilettante. That Bacon, however, did great service in spreading a taste for experimental enquiry and in drawing the popular attention to the importance of consulting facts is allowed throughout the enquiry.

Liebig’s onslaught on Bacon (Ueber Francis Bacon von Verulam) appeared both in German and in English in 1863, and was followed by a keen controversy between Liebig and Sigwart. The occasion of this work was Liebig’s annoyance at the rejection of some of his chemical theories by English agriculturists. Their singular obstinacy must, he thought, be due to some inherent defect in the English mind, and this suspicion led him to the study of the English philosophers. When, at last, he came to the works of Bacon, all was clear. These furnished, if not the source, at least the typical example of the methods of experiment and reasoning common amongst the English Dilettante, who had had the temerity to reject his theories. The study of Bacon thus acquired the charm of a scientific discovery; the writer, he tells us, went much deeper than before into the subject, and, hence, the work before us. This work, which is extremely bitter in tone, and often very inaccurate, contributes nothing new to the knowledge or appreciation of Bacon’s philosophy. It repeats the thread-bare arguments employed by Brewster and Lasson, but with an amount of exaggeration and asperity which is utterly foreign to the second, and would have been distasteful even to the first of these writers. The author is, at times, almost as violent as de Maistre or Stubbe. Thus from the English text: “Bacon is conscious that in most instances he is not truthful, and has the prudence to blunt the weapons of his adversaries beforehand;” “Vain self-praise and detraction of others’ merit go always hand in hand with his Lordship, just as with other vulgar specimens of humanity;” “When a boy, he studied jugglery, and his cleverest trick of all, that of deceiving the world, was quite successful;” “Nature, that had endowed him so richly with her best gifts, had denied him all sense for truth;” he is the type “of the scientific nut-cracker or the dining philosopher, which, under James I., became the fashion.”

In one of the numbers of the Allgemeine Zeitung (November 7, 1863) Liebig waxes still more wroth. After describing Bacon’s work as a caricature of the scientific movement of the sixteenth century, and Bacon as following in the path of science like a shadow, as parodying the calm and clear image of truth by his burlesque contortions, he compares him successively with a news-hawker, an ape in soldier’s-clothes, and a grinder of scientific instruments, who is unconscious of their use. Truly, not only are the sins of the fathers visited upon the children, but those of the children upon the fathers. Little can Bacon have anticipated the penalty he would have to pay for the unenlightened obstinacy of English farmers in the nineteenth century. Continuing Liebig’s onslaught: “Bacon’s scientific investigations were carried on for the sake of reward; the Historia Vitae et Mortis was written with the view of augmenting his influence over the King, and was intended to justify the inclination of certain persons about the Court for the pleasures of the table, as well as other appetites, and to diminish their fear of death.” Notwithstanding all these aspersions, we are told at the end of the article that “we must not forget that Bacon, above all others, saw and comprehended the value and the importance of natural science for the purposes of life,” while “Bacon’s Essays are unexceptionable documents testifying of his genius and sagacity, as well as of his profound knowledge and correct appreciation of human relations and the different conditions of men.” 8 We may only imagine what their comments would have been if put to the question: Did Bacon write Shakespeare?

Both Liebig and Lasson lay considerable stress on the crude character of many of the observations and experiments recorded in the Sylva Sylvarum. It is only fair, therefore, to Bacon’s memory to quote what is said by Rawley in his introduction to that work: “I have heard his Lordship often say that, if he should have served the glory of his own name, he had been better not to have published this Natural History; for it may seem an indigested heap of particulars, and cannot have that lustre which books cast into methods have; but that he resolved to prefer the good of men, and that which might best secure it, before anything that might have relation to himself.” “And I have heard his Lordship speak complainingly, that his Lordship (who thinketh he deserveth to be an architect in this building) should be forced to be a workman and a labourer, and to dig the clay and burn the brick; and more than that (according to the hard condition of the Israelites at the latter end), to gather the straw and stubble over all the fields to burn the bricks withal.” Nor is the Sylva Sylvarum so contemptible as Bacon’s adversaries represent it to be. It is probably far the best and most complete single collection of the kind that, up to that time, had been published. Even Liebig is almost outdone by his French translator, M. de Tchihatchef. 9 These various accusations against Bacon or his philosophy, when given in brief, resolve themselves into the following: first, he was an atheist; second, he was a plagiarist; third, he was a smatterer; fourth, his works have had no influence in the subsequent progress of science; fifth, his proposed methods of investigation are defective, if not false, in statement, and inapplicable in practice. 10 It can only be wondered how Bacon’s work was truly seen or understood, in his time.